In this study data are drawn from ethnographic research combined with
audio-recordings of everyday peer interactions in a multiethnic elementary school in
Sweden. The analysis is based on longitudinal work among five preadolescent girls
with low income and mixed ethnicities. Special attention is given to the social process
(conflict talk, accounts, insults, threats, forms of membership categorization-work) of
social exclusion in a girl group. The analysis combines ethnography with examination
of talk-in-interaction (CA) and ethnomethodological concerns for membership
categorizations (MCA). As will be demonstrated the targeted girl was affiliated with
multiple negative categorizations such as “bad friend”, “bad girl”, ”friendless”,
“insane” and “bullied”, and eventually socially excluded from the girl-group. In
constructing such categorizations the girls’ engaged in relational talk in which they
deployed diverse forms of judgmental work (complaints, accusations, justifications,
insults, recycling, accounts, negative person descriptions). As a result, the girls
arranged social relations of power, indexed social identities, policed gender-deviant
behaviours and justified social exclusion. Overall the analysis provides a critical
perspective on peer victimization that accounts for the complexities, dynamics and
contradictions inherent in girl-bullying and feminine morality.